


though i know the river is dry

by defcontwo



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-09
Updated: 2014-05-09
Packaged: 2018-01-24 02:04:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1587629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/defcontwo/pseuds/defcontwo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is what he knows of the man he used to be, all that remains when you strip him down to his disparate parts and leave him with nothing but skin, bones and kevlar: Bucky Barnes had a protective streak a mile long and the Winter Soldier thinks -- the Winter Soldier thinks, all right, let's start with that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	though i know the river is dry

**Author's Note:**

  * For [coffeeincosmos (spacerhapsody)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacerhapsody/gifts).



> For Chalada, a very very belated birthday present based off the excellent prompt you gave me. 
> 
> This started its life out as therapy via chance encounters in diners and...sort of became something else but hopefully the something else still works for you. Happy birthday, friend!

He has this memory. 

He thinks it must be his because he can almost taste the acrid smoke from his cigarettes in the back of his throat, feel the grease smudged all over his fingers and down the sides of his work pants. 

James Buchanan Barnes worked in a garage before the war, the museum wall said, just like his daddy before him and it sounds about as right as anything even if he closes eyes and can't bring an image to mind, a man who might have looked like him, where he got the color of his eyes from, nothing, _anything_. 

But this, he remembers: 

Shaking hands tearing open the envelope, getting grease all over it and not caring, not even a little bit. Bold, black print on thin white paper, his name in neat typewriter font. He wasn't the first fella he knew to get a draft notice; wouldn't be the last, either. 

He remembers thinking of a small slip of a girl with brown hair in fine plaits and a stubborn chin and a mean right hook; remembers thinking of thin shoulders and blond hair and a mouth too big for the body it was attached to and he remembers shaking, suddenly and violently, because who the hell was gonna take care of 'em when he wasn't around. 

This sudden flash, sharp and rapid and bright and more than he knows what to do with -- it reminds him of the uniform dragging along mud, blood beneath his fingernails and a water logged suit and a desire, for the first time in a long time, to save rather than kill. 

This is what he knows of the man he used to be, all that remains when you strip him down to his disparate parts and leave him with nothing but skin, bones and kevlar: Bucky Barnes had a protective streak a mile long and the Winter Soldier thinks -- the Winter Soldier thinks, all right, let's start with that. 

\- 

Rebecca Barnes got her degree in English at a community college in Brooklyn in 1950. Picked up sticks and got the hell out of town as soon as possible, as far as the story goes. She got a job in the typing pool at the Baltimore Sun and never looked back. 

Got married in 1959 and divorced in 1965. No kids but a hell of a legacy of working her way up from the bottom. Rebecca Barnes was a legend for any woman who walked through the hallways of the Sun because she fought tooth and nail, they said, to make every word count and always with that stubborn jaw, that sure gait. Brutally honest, they said, could've had a string of Pulitzers if it was a different time. 

There's a cemetery halfway across town, a tombstone with her name on it, but something in his gut tells him it's not worth the visit. This place -- this is right. 

The Winter Soldier sits at a diner across from the headquarters of the Baltimore Sun, taking slow sips of bitter, too strong coffee, trying to stem this feeling unfurling in his chest that takes him too many minutes to put a name to. 

It's pride, he realizes, and the Winter Soldier wonders at it. 

That's his little Becca, she never did take shit from anyone, not even from her big jerk of a brother, an inner voice pipes up and the Soldier's still starts a little to know that it's his. 

He's there for an hour and then another and the waitress is just starting to give him suspicious looks, even as she comes by and refills his coffee for the fifth time, when the bell over the door rings and the Black Widow walks in. 

She doesn't look the part. Hair dyed brown and put away in a simple plait that brings on a shock of deja vu, and casual, comfortable clothing that's nothing like what anyone's seen the Black Widow wear. With the horn-rimmed eyeglasses and the backpack slung over her shoulder, she could be anyone. 

But she is not anyone, she's a professional and his sniper's eyes track her movements, calculating and assessing. She's got a garrote wire around her neck disguised as a charm necklace and at least two guns on her person. He closes his eyes and sees the causeway in Washington, D.C., her voice screaming itself hoarse. _Go, get out of the way._

She's not going to pull in a crowded diner, not unless she has to. 

She slips into the seat across from him and crosses her arms over her chest, playing the part of a bored twenty-something with practiced ease. 

"Gotta say, I expected you to wander a little further away from the scene of the crime than this," she says. 

He shakes his head. Facts flit across his mind, researched and memorized and recited until he knew them by heart. It's all out there in the open, now, no need to work too hard at it. All he needed was a stolen laptop and a few hours. 

Natalia Alianovna Romanova, formerly of the Red Room, formerly of SHIELD. They are not so different, the two of them. 

"No. You didn't." 

The Black Widow leans back in her seat and the vinyl seat creaks with her. "You're gaining back cognizant, independent thought processes faster than I would have expected." 

He spent the night before huddled into a corner of his motel room, eyes on all exits, a knife in his hand, with a flood of memories that raised more questions than they answered. 

_He_ , James Barnes insists, but with Alexander Pierce, it was always _it_ , and he shakes a little from the dissonance of it, hides the hand that is flesh and blood beneath the table so that she cannot see his weakness. 

The Winter Soldier licks dry, cracked lips that quirk in a long-forgotten smirk. "I think you have an optimistic outlook on my situation, Romanova." 

Romanova tilts her head, eyes staring him down like she's cutting him open and figuring out which pieces go where; like she's trying to figure out what's making him tick and finding it wanting. 

Would he tell her, if he even knew the answer himself? 

But he doesn't know. That's kind of the whole point. 

"By any rights, you should be such a wreck of a human being that you could live fifty, sixty more years and not even know your own name, Barnes. Whatever variation of the serum that Zola gave you -- I don't know." She pauses, giving a little shrug that might be part of her act but he's not sure if he can tell the difference just yet. "It's working." 

"Why are you here?" 

"He's searching for you," she says, and the Winter Soldier sucks in a breath. Sees a uniform-clad arm slung around bony shoulders in his mind's eye, flashes of blond hair falling into blue eyes and his fingers twitch with a long forgotten reflex to push it back out of the way, even though he never, ever did. 

"Are you going to tell him where to look?" 

"Steve has this way about him," Romanova starts, stirring sugar into her coffee. "This unflinching belief. The strength of it -- I never got it, not until I knew him, not until we became….friends, if you can believe it, ex-KGB buddy-ing up with the one and only Captain America, will wonders never cease. That kind of light, you know, it inspires people. But it can also be overwhelming. It can be blinding." 

His shoulders sag in relief. "So, that's a no." 

Romanova drains her cup of coffee quickly, before moving to stand. "Take it from one fucked up assassin to another, Barnes. You have to start with yourself, first, or else you'll never get anywhere." 

"I don't even know what the hell that even means," he says and it feels scraped out of him like so much blood under his fingernails. 

Romanova levels him with a cool stare. She's taken two of his slugs and lived to tell the tale. He's starting to get why. 

"So figure it out." 

\- 

He hot-wires a nondescript car, a sedan in a basic navy blue and pockets a road map of the United States from a convenience store. 

The Eastern Seaboard holds too many ghosts, poses too many questions that leave him shaking, scattered. 

He picks a highway and starts heading west. 

(Barnes, she'd called him, and it felt right.

Another place to start). 

\- 

There's a monotony to middle America that's comforting. He can drive for hours and the scenery doesn't change much. There is nothing of Brooklyn, of DC, of the cold forests of Europe here. 

Driving with the windows rolled down at a leisurely pace, music blaring out from the rickety stereo, Barnes is divorced from his ghosts. 

He used to like music, he thinks. Music and dancing and that squirrelly little look in Steve's eyes whenever Barnes used to talk him into a double date. 

_Buck, c'mon_ , Steve'd say but always with a sort of indulgent quirk to his lips like he was always mere seconds away from giving in at any moment. He always did, always with that bright, intent look that he saved just for Barnes, the one that made Barnes's heart drop into his stomach and his palms sweat because he was eighteen, twenty, twenty-two years old and he still never got tired of that look, still never got tired of looking right back, of telling himself _maybe_ and _someday_. 

Barnes shakes himself out of the memory and swallows back bile. 

He crosses the border into Indiana and a man croons over the radio, _now those memories come back to haunt me, they haunt me like a curse._

\- 

Shelbyville, Indiana is a dot on the map and nothing else. He was born here, the history books say, but it gives him nothing. 

He spends a day there and then moves on. 

\- 

Kansas reminds him of an old movie. 

He doesn't remember the plot. Hell, he doesn't even remember the goddamn name. 

But he remembers this: 

He and Steve saw it together in the middle of the day on a Saturday. It'd been a long summer and they'd both worked and scrapped and fought their asses off to save up some money for the winter and Rebecca, she'd already seen it with some of the gals she was friends with, so they dug some money out of their respective savings and decided what the hell, might as well treat themselves. The news from Europe was getting uglier by the day and they all knew it and there was a feeling that they were on the cusp of something, something ugly and dark and they've learned to trust that instinct, growing up, that tiny voice that pipes up and says maybe you should make the most of now because you never know when it's all gonna go to shit. 

They'd sat in the back row and shared some corned beef sandwiches that they snuck in under their shirts and he kept cracking jokes about how maybe he oughtta take Steve dancing after, make it a real proper date and Steve'd just looked at him and raised his eyebrows and suddenly the joke wasn't funny anymore because Barnes had never wanted to kiss Steve more than in that moment. 

Maybe now he can guess why he doesn't remember much of the damn plot. 

\- 

He drives by the sign for the Grand Canyon and has to pull over and get out of the car. He's sweating and shaking all over and maybe it's that he hasn't slept more than three hours a night for weeks on end and maybe it's because he'd panicked, thought he spotted a tail out of the corner of his eye and left his stack of pancakes abandoned in an IHOP four hours from here, but it's too much. 

Too much and not enough because some of it makes sense, forms a cohesive narrative from point A to point B, this was your life, James Buchanan Barnes, too bad it was ripped out of you, leaving you with a gaping, bleeding wound that hasn’t stopped hemorrhaging just yet, might not ever, but. 

But most of it is still crossed out or faded, out of focus, obscured by so many blood patterns. 

They were always gonna see the Grand Canyon. That was the plan, after Becca finished school. Save up some money, maybe ride the boxcars if they had to, and make sure Steve had enough watercolors to savor the moment, to capture it and press it down into paint and paper. 

Becca's dead, died of old age and a full life, and Steve's in Warsaw, maybe, or Krakow, chasing a ghost that Barnes isn't sure he'll ever be able to quite match up to. 

Barnes leans over, hands on knees and puts his head between his legs and takes deep, gasping breaths and for the first time in seventy odd years, feels the tell-tale pin prick of tears in the corner of his eyes.

\- 

He gets into Phoenix around two AM, exhausted and hungry, skin stretched tight around the edges from too little sleep and shaken nerves. The buzzing, flickering neon lights of 24 hour diner catch his eye and he's turning into the parking lot before he's even really thinking about it. He's got ten bucks in his pocket which should be enough to get him some food before he can find a place to park and sack out in the back for the night. 

It should bother him, how little money he has, how he's had to resort to scrounging and picking pockets but the thing is, out of everything, it's the one out of the ordinary thing he can do that doesn't leave him shaking, leave him wondering who he used it on and how many he killed it with. 

This sharp eye for the easy target, the lax security and the quick exit -- this is from before, from the thin years, from the Depression, when the garage wasn't doing so well and there wasn't enough stretched across to make sure they all had a warm meal at the end of the day and even when there was, there was still Steve and his mom and how there was just never enough for the right medications.

James Barnes wasn't afraid of an honest day's work but he wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty, neither. 

Not when it was necessary. 

He digs his metal hand into his jacket pocket and uses his hip to nudge open the door to the diner. It's packed -- more packed than he's comfortable with, really, and he realizes this must be close to a university because they're all a bunch of college kids, young and bright-eyed, some of them with laptops on the table. 

But the smell of coffee is sharp and comforting and there's pie on the counter that looks just like something Sarah Rogers used to make and just this once, he's tired of eyeing the exits. 

He slumps into an empty stool at the counter. To his left, there's a dark-skinned boy in an Arizona State sweatshirt bent over a pile of books who can't be any older than twenty and it makes him feel older just to look at the kid, how young he looks. But maybe it's all relative to him at this point. Everyone looks younger to him; looks innocent, like they haven't seen the worst of it yet and they never will. 

A waitress comes over, pencil tapping on notepad and a grin that doesn't quite reach her eyes all the way, and takes his order with a sharp nod. Cheese omelet, a slice of pie and a cup of coffee. Eight bucks on the nose. He'll worry about funds in the morning. 

The kid next to him is deep in thought, a bright red textbook flipped open to the left of his plate of pie. Barnes's eyes scan quickly over the header that reads "Intro to Constitutional Law," as the boy scribbles furiously into his notebook, muttering to himself and Barnes -- hell, he hasn't talked to people much, or at all, but the kid seems annoyed, annoyed and prickly in that way that reminds him of how Steve always got when something pinged his sense of wrongness. 

It was the kind of annoyed that had started way too many fights that Bucky always wound up finishing and maybe it's the weariness or the bone deep craving for familiarity, but this time, his curiosity gets the better of him. 

"You all right, kid?" 

The boy's head jerks up and he gives Barnes a blank stare before visibly shaking himself. "Uh, yeah? Sorry. Just. Never mind. I'll try to keep it down." 

Barnes's omelet comes and he digs in with a furor that he can't even pretend to be ashamed of, all elbows on the table and barely taking the time to chew and boy, if his mother could see him now, the words she'd have for him. 

Barnes pauses, fork in mid-air. His mother. It's the first time he's thought of her, easily and unprompted, and there's a memory around the edges of his consciousness starting to take shape. 

"Hey, are you a vet?" The kid says suddenly. "Sorry, it's just…you kind of have the look. Half my family's been in the Army, I guess I know it when I see it." 

He's a soldier and a veteran and a prisoner of war and a goddamn traitor to the flag all wrapped up in one but he knows what he looks like, now, the stubble that he hasn't bothered with in days and the worn down clothes and there's an easy answer here, one that won’t make people look twice, not without equal parts pity and shame and a desire to keep on moving. 

He nods roughly. "Yeah." 

The kid holds out a hand. "Names probably should've come before personal questions, huh? I'm Eli." 

Barnes takes it. "James." 

It comes out easier than he would have thought. 

“You got a good reason for trying to start an argument with a book, Eli?” 

Eli sighs, twirling a pen around between two fingers. “I’ve got this Con Law exam in the morning. The professor’s an asshole who can’t take a single criticism of the dominant political hegemony, he’s shut down every argument I’ve ever started in class and if I answer the questions on the exam honestly, I’m pretty sure he’s gonna fail me.” 

Barnes shakes his head, taking a long sip from his coffee. “Can’t answer them dishonestly, though, can you.” 

“Sometimes...sometimes, I wonder why I even bother, you know? I’m studying to be a lawyer to help people but man, sometimes people are the last one’s I want to help.” 

There’s another image here, the dark corner of a bar overlaid with the bright fluorescent lights of the diner, Gabe and Jim in the corner, drunk and pissed as all hell at the way the CO from an outside unit had treated them. Steve had gone bright red, tried to give the guy a talking to but Barnes already knew with guys like that, sometimes there’s no talking that’s gonna do any good and it’d spoiled the mood in the unit for weeks afterwards, as they started to wonder for the first time just exactly what they’d all be going back to if they all made it home alive. 

Steve and Barnes and Dugan, they’d go back as guaranteed heroes, but Gabe and Jim, they realized that maybe that wasn’t guaranteed at all and Barnes -- Barnes had never felt like more of a coward then in that moment. 

Barnes blinks and the fluorescent lights of the diner creates haloes in his vision that he has to shake away. 

“You still with me, James?” Eli asks, a wry twist to his lips. 

“Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, kid. What’d you say?” 

Eli shrugs. “Not important. Hey, can I ask you something?” 

“Think you just did.” 

Eli makes a face at him. “Was it worth it? The war, I mean. Fighting for this country. Did you ever think...maybe it wasn’t worth it?” 

“You always ask complete strangers this kind of stuff, Eli?” 

Eli laughs. “Yeah, kind of. Just ask my friends, they’ll all jump to tell you that I’m a little too intense for my own good.” 

Barnes shrugs. He knows what the kid is asking. Does he regret the choice he made? Only he didn’t choose it. Got a draft notice and a climb up the ladder on account of desperate circumstances and his sharp eye, nothing more, nothing less. He can’t say that, though, not without catching a few looks, not with how the draft’s been out of use for years and years. 

There was only one choice he ever made and it was the choice he’d make every time, over and over, through hell and back. 

Barnes drags a hand through too-long hair and sighs. “I have a friend...he’d say it’s not the country as it is that you’re fighting for. It’s what it could be. But I’ll be honest with you, kid, I ain’t got a fucking clue what that really means.” 

Eli hums. “Your friend sounds like a speech straight out of one of the old Cap comics but...point taken, I guess.” 

Barnes snorts into his coffee. The kid has no clue how on the mark he really is. 

“Eli, are you actively harassing random diner goers now, is that what’s happening here?” 

Another boy about Eli’s age, this one in a neat button up with square glasses and wearing a look on his face that is equal parts fond and exasperated, comes striding up to the counter. “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t have any friends who I can take out in public, apparently.” 

Eli rolls his eyes pointedly. “C’mon, David, you make it sound like I’m Tommy. I am a lot better than Tommy. Stop giving me that look.” 

The two boys stare at each other in a stand off for about a minute and Barnes doesn’t bother to hide the smirk working its way across his face. The one in glasses, David, breaks first. 

“Dude, your exam is in less than six hours, I don’t know why you’re even here in the first place.” 

“What? No, it’s not.” Eli chances a look at the cracked clock hanging above the diner kitchen and then swears loudly. “Yeah, okay it is. Hey, James? Thanks for the talk...and for answering my mildly intense questions. Take care of yourself, all right?” 

Barnes lifts the coffee cup in salut. “Hey, good luck tomorrow.” 

The two boys make their way out of the diner, bickering softly and Barnes thinks maybe that’s the most normal conversation he's had in seventy years. 

\- 

In San Diego, he almost puts a knife through a tourist asking for directions. 

It’s two steps forward, five steps back. Barnes versus HYDRA, Barnes versus the asset and every time he thinks he’s winning, he loses. 

He takes the 5 heading north to Los Angeles because it’s as good a place as any. Stops on the side of the road when he sees a girl with an American flag for a jacket and dark curly hair hitch-hiking on the side of the road, next to a wreck of a motorcycle. 

It’s a Bucky Barnes instinct, that protective streak, even as he’s shaking himself for it. Tries to tell himself that he’s not the most dangerous thing on this road but he can’t, not when it’s the biggest fucking lie he’s ever told himself and he’s told himself some real doozies. 

The girl crosses her arms over her chest, lifts her chin at him and stares him down. “Listen up, chico. I gotta get home to LA, my bike is fucked and my phone is out of service. If you try anything, I will beat the shit out of you, you hear me?” 

Barnes nods warily and thinks maybe it’s a good thing he decided to shave two cities ago, decided to tie his hair back into something vaguely resembling order, because now he looks less like someone that’d wind up reported to the cops later. 

She reminds him of his sister and the thought doesn’t hurt as much as he expected it to. 

“Trust me, kid, I ain’t even remotely in the same country as interested in trying anything. Just heading your way, is all.” 

She introduces herself as America, America Chavez, as he helps her fit her wreck of a bike into the back of the truck he’s been driving since Indiana, and no, the jacket is not an ironic fashion statement, she just likes it, is all. 

They don’t talk on the road to LA, which he guesses suits them both just fine. He drops her and her wrecked bike off in front of a nice looking apartment building, where a girl with dark hair is standing out front waiting for her, wearing a purple shirt and a worried frown. 

“Seriously? You could’ve been in the car with the Zodiac Killer, America, for all you knew,” the girl says, and America laughs. 

“Pretty sure the Zodiac Killer was up north, princess,” America says. 

“Yeah, well, he could’ve moved,” the girl says and America rolls her eyes, tugs the other girl in by the belt loops of her jean shorts and he doesn’t need to be here anymore, starts up the truck and starts to pull away because the open, naked fondness with which these two girls look at each other puts a twist of regret in his gut because there are some things that couldn’t be destroyed by HYDRA programming, they were always there, lurking beneath the surface waiting to be pried out and all of a sudden, LA is the last place he wants to be. 

He digs out the phone number that Romanova left for him and heads for the airport. 

\- 

He walks through the arrivals gate at Newark and finds the man whose wings he tore off waiting for him. 

“Do I want to know how you got that arm through airport security?” 

Barnes shrugs. “I was responsible for several high profile assassinations. Getting through metal detectors was a necessity. I don’t know how they did it.” 

The man eyeballs him. “So the answer is no, I definitely don’t want to know how you got your giant honking metal arm through airport security.”

“Are you here to arrest me?” 

At this, the man laughs. “Dude, are you kidding me? Yes. Yes, I came alone. Just little old human me with no actual responsibility to uphold the law to arrest you, the guy who can rip a steering wheel out of a car like a kid tears off a band-aid.” 

Barnes shrugs. “You could have back-up.” 

The man doesn’t, though. He already scanned the area as he was walking out, clocking all of the exits. It’s a habit he thinks he’ll never, ever be able to force himself out of. 

“Look -- let’s just. Okay. Hey, I’m Sam Wilson. I’m reasonably sure that you’re not going to kill me because Natasha has -- has faith, or whatever, so let’s try and do this the adult way.” 

Sam holds out his hand and Barnes takes it. 

“You already know my name,” he says, a wry twist to his lips. 

Sam catches his gaze and holds it. “Yeah but do you?” 

He shrugs. “James Barnes, at your service.” 

“What would you do if I called you Jimmy?” 

“Break your arm, probably,” Barnes deadpans. 

He waits a beat and then another and then Sam is laughing, shaking his head while muttering to himself something that sounds a little like, “man, the shit I get myself into.” 

The ride into the city is mostly silent. It’s when the surroundings start to look a little more familiar that his skin starts to feel stretched too tight and he drags a shaking hand through his loose hair to hide the tremor. 

“Steve doesn’t know I’m coming, does he.” 

Sam tosses him a sideways glance. “Nah. Nat thought it’d be better if he didn’t drive himself ‘round the bend anticipating your arrival and I agreed.” 

“Where is he now?” 

Sam checks his watch. “Now? Probably just getting out of the art therapy sessions I talked him into. He always stops by a diner after, I can drop you there or you can wait until after…” 

Sam trails off and something about his face suggests that he thinks a public confrontation between the two of them is a ten types of terrible idea. 

Barnes clears his throat. “Talked him into, huh?” 

Sam laughs. “Yeah, well. Let’s just say I did some intricate maneuvering. It had to be his decision, in the end. Had to, or else he never would’ve gone. He’s too damn stubborn for his own good, your boy.” 

“Yeah, he is,” Barnes says. 

“You want to go straight to him, don’t you?” 

Barnes blows out a breath. There’s no use beating around the bush, here. 

“Yeah, I do.” 

“Should I stick around?” 

“I don’t know, you gonna get backup?” 

A red traffic light blinks down at them, giving Sam the time to turn and give him an incredulous look. “Man, I take it all back. You two geriatric assholes clearly deserve each other. Yeah, yeah, all right. Solo mission, operation potentially violent joyous reunion. If half of Williamsburg gets destroyed in the process, a lot of hipsters are gonna try to move to Harlem and I’m going to be very, _very_ pissed.” 

\- 

He knows this place. They used to sell milkshakes here. Still do, if the brightly colored sign done up in all pastels is anything to go by. Funny, that so much can shift and break and re-mold itself around them but seventy years later, here he is and this place is still standing, and selling the same goddamn milkshakes. 

There’s a booth towards the back and he can make out the broad shape of Steve’s shoulders, hunched over. He knows that pose like he knows the back of his hand, would bet every dollar in his pocket that when he rounds the corner, Steve will be hunched over a notebook, sketching. 

The more things change. 

Barnes clenches and unclenches his fist and tells himself if he can’t do this, then what’s the goddamn point. 

He rounds the corner and sure enough, there’s Stevie Rogers bent over his sketchpad, a half-forgotten chocolate milkshake to his left and a furrow of concentration between his brow and Barnes has to stop and catch his breath at the sight of it. He doesn’t know what home is, anymore, any better than he knows himself but this -- this right here, this is the closest he’s ever gotten. 

Barnes slides into the seat opposite Steve, takes the time to savor the look on Steve’s face, the way Steve’s eyes widen and he smiles, quick and sharp and so clearly flying in the face of any shreds of good, sound self-preservation instincts he might’ve ever had. 

“Hey, Buck.” 

Barnes knocks their knees together under the table like he used to when they were kids and he’s not sure if he knows how to smile back just yet, not open and bright and wide just like that, but he’s willing to give it a try. 

“Hey, Steve.”

**Author's Note:**

> so, the conversation between bucky and eli was super heavily influenced by the conversation they have in young avengers presents #1: patriot, which is a great great issue that i really recommend checking out. 
> 
> as always, if you want to drop by and say hi, you can find me at my [tumblr!](http://queercap.tumblr.com) :)


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